


ever since I saw you last

by Illyria_Lives



Category: Rawhide (TV), Trilogia del dollaro | Dollars Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Doomed OTP, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, I haven't used AO3 in so long I have no idea how to tag things, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-06 20:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14064768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illyria_Lives/pseuds/Illyria_Lives
Summary: An exploration of Rowdy Yates, who went on to become the Man With No Name... and then found Mr. Favor again, years later.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stephantom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephantom/gifts).



> A few things:
> 
> 1) I'm only so far into Rawhide right now (school keeps me from many things), so I'm gonna try and keep to the things I've seen in the show or in gifsets, so you'll see very little mention of things from later seasons until I actually, like, watch them, lol.  
> 2) Speaking of gifsets, the Rowdy and Gil relationship here is heavily based off some very good points made by stephantom on tumblr about the toxicity of the relationship we see between them in the show... so this is heavy on the angst, low on the actual outright shipping.  
> 3) Because The Good the Bad and the Ugly takes place during the Civil War, I'm just gonna... ignore it. This takes place after the events of Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, and overall about ten years since the end of Rawhide itself.

He loses the money in about two weeks.  Which is exactly how he’s used to things progressing; at this point in his life, though he proceeds from job to job with the same cynical acceptance, there remains inside of him an incredibly negative seed.  Of course he loses the money, from Indio and the others, and Mortimer’s share besides— that’s just his luck. Just the way the world happens to turn for him, has turned for him, ever since he was a young man.

So, penniless, yet still on a horse, the man sometimes called Joe, sometimes called Manco, most often times called nothing at all rides into the small town of Fleming, Texas.  It’s the farthest north he’s been in years; the first time he’s been above the border in about a decade. Yeah, a decade at least. Time is hazy, especially as Manco placed most of his memorial efforts on  _ forgetting  _ the last time he was in Texas.

It’s a typical town.  Ranchers and freeholders living peacefully, at least, appearance-wise, they appear to be living peacefully.  At the very least they’re not wary of outsiders, as his entrance onto Main Street doesn’t get more than the most basic glances from the populace, going about their business.  A buggy rides by the other direction; the older man at the reins touches his hat-brim, and Manco follows suit with his left hand. By his right hangs his gun, and the scorching bloody mark on his neck is fresh enough to make him glad to have the weapon on him.  That gun is the only reason he didn’t lose his life along with his Indio money.

It’s funny— as he considers his gun and dismounts his horse outside of the seedier of the town’s two saloons, he thinks on how this is possibly the closest  _ it’s  _ come to its homeland since he got his hand on it.  If imagination of the useless kind wasn’t likely to distract and even kill, Manco would have indulged in imagining the old silver rattlesnake made out on the handle rearing up, flickering out its tongue, and tasting how close it is to its home.  Well, not home, but where the gun had come into Manco’s possession. 

_ If  _ he was given to imaginative indulgence, he would have imagined that.  But he’s not, so he doesn’t, especially as the incident with him and his gun sits squarely in the period of time Manco yearns to  _ forget _ .  Texas, his youth, the gun and the church— but then he’s inside the saloon and lets himself scan the room.

His initial reading of the town as quiet is correct, if the worst saloon is anything to go by (and it usually is).  The men who slouch around in the shadowy interior are at sturdy tables, ones that haven’t seen any kind of fierce fight in a long time, if ever.  They smoke, and drink from matching glasses, and by their clothing are at the very worst just farmhands. If they wear guns, they wear them high, and their gunbelts aren’t sporting more than a few backup rounds.  Manco tries not to grin. All those men probably ever fired their guns at were cans on fenceposts or snakes. His spurs ring on the wooden floor, and the men all look at him. He’s a snake, makes sure to let the butt of his gun show from behind his green and yellow serape— the kind of snake they can’t get away with shooting at.  

The men wisely look back to their drinks, and Manco chooses a table in the corner, placing his back to the wall, and putting his feet up on another chair.

The talk that had abated at his entrance begins to pick up once again.  After the disasters the world has thrown at him— after his bad luck coming at him with so much force— it’s heartening, to see he can still read and write a room.  A pleasant ghost-whisper of a reed flute makes him grin, and he places his order with a saloon girl (not a Saloon Girl, but more of a barmaid) with more pleasantness than he’s expressed in weeks.

“Not from around here, are you?” the saloon girl comments when she arrives with his glass of beer.  She’s dressed like a prairie girl, although her corset seems tight-laced, but seems innocent enough.  Pretty enough, too. He takes his hat off before taking a sip of his drink. His hair is yellow and sun-bleached, and the barmaid watches as he pushes the hair away from his bright eyes.  Bright eyes narrowed by the same sun that bleached his hair, narrowed and piercing.

“Actually, I am from around here,” he says, voice pitched low and quiet.

“Oh.”  She blinks and tilts her hips a certain degree.  He makes no show of not watching her do it. “Fleming?”

“Texas.”  Close enough.

“Been away long?”

“Yeah,” he rumbles, and licks his lips.  The saloon girl first looks down and then away.  Yeah, perhaps his luck was changing. After his drink, he decides, he’s going to check the local law office for any bounties, get himself a room, a hot bath, perhaps another drink…

The doors to the saloon swing open, the bartender calls a greeting, and Manco’s heart goes cold even as the adrenaline enters his veins.  It can’t be— but it is. Of all the bad luck in the world, in  _ his  _ world, a world of bandits and revenge and blood, this is what he gets.  Every lean and hungry line in his body falls into a stillness, a stillness like crawling through the mud beneath the wooden sidewalks.  

“Hey, Sharp,” Gil Favor, trail boss, says in greeting to the bartender, and strolls right up to the bar like he owns the place.  Like he’s lived here all his life. He’s dressed odd— odd for Manco, who struggles to align this image of Gil Favor (Gil  _ Favor _ ) in a not badly worn work suit, with a fresh black hat in one hand, a hat that doesn’t show any dust and doesn’t sport any stampede strings with the image of Gil Favor in his memory.  This Mr. Favor has grey in his hair, doesn’t wear a gun, doesn’t even scan the room for trouble— he still swaggers like a man who spent half his life in the saddle— doesn’t see Manco, sitting in the corner.  He takes his foot down off of the chair and slides low, settling his hat back on his head, pulling it low.

The barmaid, probably bored by his sudden bout of silence and stillness, has left by the time he decides to notice her, namely her absense.  Fine with him. He takes another pull from his glass, and watches as Mr. Favor speaks with the bartender. Happy. They’re making some kind of deal.  As much as Manco strains to pick up the words, the very cadence of Mr. Favor’s voice, the depth of pitch, keeps knocking into Manco’s chest. Like a horse’s hooves, into his chest.

“Hey,” he says, quiet-like, to the man closest him.  He’s watching, but not playing, a game of poker at a neighboring table.  “Hey, you.” The man turns. He’s red faced, bearded, and in shirtsleeves.  Laborer. 

“What?” he asks.  Manco gestures him closer, and the man only stares for a half a second before curiosity makes him approach.  First, to loosen him up, Manco offers a quirley, and the man happily accepts, sitting in the chair without minding the mud left by Manco’s boots.  

Only once he and his new friend are smoking does Manco get to his point.  He jerks his chin, enough to indicate but not enough to garner attention from the man himself.  “You know that old cowboy, chatting up the bartender?”

“Who?” the man looks where Manco indicates, and he wants to hit him for making the motion so obvious, for craning and straining; but Mr. Favor continues to talk to the bartender, one foot chucked up on the footrail.  Lost some of his edge; he doesn’t even wear spurs. “Oh, you mean Favor.”

Manco bites his tongue as the old instinct rises up, acidic,  _ That’s  _ Mr _. Favor!   _ “Yeah, him.”

“Well, you could almost say he was the boss of the town, ‘cept he doesn’t live in town.”

Yeah, that tracks out alright.  Manco tilts his head, and plays his lower lip along the ridge of his teeth.  The look in his eyes is like the cutting tune of a sharp flute, looking at Mr. Favor’s back.  “He a rancher?”

“Yup, cattleman.  Doesn’t have the most money, doesn’t have the most land, but you can be damn sure can handle himself.  Used to be a trail boss, or so everyone says.”

“Yeah,” is all Manco says.  He finishes his beer, wishes he had ordered whiskey.

“You know him?”

“Used to.”

“Ever did a drive with him?”

He considers lying, decides against it.  “Yeah.” The word is bitter in his mouth, and he rolls the short cigar around.

“I heard he was really something.”

“Yeah,” Manco echoes, “he was.”

“You know him well at all?”

Manco snorts.  “I guess.”

“What d’you mean?”

A small part of him recognizes that he’s saying too much, but he’s not supposed to be running anymore, so why hide behind irony?  “I used to really worship him.” He follows this with a dark laugh that is lost on his new friend.

“Oh.”  The man perks up.  He’s intrigued. Power to him for a penny, Manco thinks, and lights another cigar.  “So you two were close?”

“Not at all, actually.”

“Oh.”  The man furrows his brow.  Manco knows he should keep the string of conversation going, or at least get up and leave before the man gets any ideas about prying, but there’s something in his belly that won’t be quiet.  Some kind of dark will, the kind of thing he ought to know to ignore by now. That same urge had gotten him drained of all his Baxter-Rojo money, and almost killed him besides.

He stands up.  “Thanks,” he says to the man, who nods back, before going back to his game of cards.  He’ll be running his tongue over this interaction for a while, Manco knows his type, bored from the monotony of life and so any small scuffle was a diversion.  Himself, he’d gotten tired of scuffles long ago. But hey, it’s a living— if you survive.

Gil Favor doesn’t turn around as Manco approaches him.  Doesn’t do more than a cursory peripheral glance as Manco stands next to him at the bar.  Manco takes out a few of the coins he has left, places them on the bar with his left hand.  Mr. Favor’s own hand is not a foot from his own, broad fingers curved against the wood of the bar.

A small part of his mind wonders what the hell he’s going to gain from this stunt.  Another part of him knows exactly what he’s going to be getting out of it— what he’s wanted for so goddamn long.  Some kind of conversation. Some kind of airing of grievances. And he’s just so goddamn tired of running.  Tired of always coming up empty.

“Whiskey,” he says, and as soon as he says it, he can sense how Gil Favor recognizes him.  After all this time, he recognizes him just by his voice, and goes totally still. The bartender notices. He stares, eyes flickering between the two men.  Respectable rancher Mr. Favor and a man with no name and a sneer, standing beside him.

Then, he turns.  Like some kind of horror is waiting for him, he turns, eyes wide, eyebrows raised.  Manco knows those eyes. He even knows the name that Mr. Favor says in a shocked half-whisper, although he hasn’t gone by it in years.

Gil Favor looks him in the eye and says, “Rowdy.”


	2. Chapter 2

Gil Favor has never thought of himself as a God-fearing man.  No, it’s not the threat of the Almighty that makes him take pause— he is an old drover after all— it’s always been nature that has his full respect.  Storms, drought, fire, all of the things that threaten a herd are the things Gil Favor can claim to fear, even now that he’s landed and grounded and not out on the range, where fear is par the daily course.

That being said, the jolt of—  _ something _ — that passes through his core at that single word, said so calmly, “ _ Whiskey _ ,” suddenly brings the Almighty to mind.  Here it is, a part of his past, come back— come so harshly back, it leaves him reeling.  Because it can’t be. Barring an act of God, there’s no possible way, not out here in the middle of nowhere, not after so long with nothing but silence— but it can’t be anyone else.  Favor would know him in the dark, know him a thousand years from now.

At first, it’s just the hand he sees, on the bar— kid always did have big hands, long fingers, a leather wrist support— then the arm.  Covered in some kind of shawl, worn, green and yellow, then the shoulders, the neck, some kind of half-healed wound hidden by a familiar ropy bandana, the profile, and it’s him.  Not a thousand years. Just  _ him _ , turning to look at Favor, and while the surface details remain the same (jaw, nose, bright eyes), time has done its work.  While Favor knows who it is, he feels like a stranger. He looks at him like a stranger, half a sneer on his mouth.

“Rowdy.”  The name comes out of Favor’s mouth like some kind of ghost.  “Rowdy Yates.”

The laugh that comes out of the man’s mouth is  _ nothing  _ like Rowdy Yates.  It’s dark, and gravelly, and half a brush fire.  “Haven’t heard that one in a while,” he says, and taps his hand against his money— looks like Mexican coins.  “I said,  _ whiskey _ .”

The Rowdy Yates Favor remembers wouldn’t have barked out an order like that.  Wouldn’t have his hat still on, pulled low and suspicious-like. Wouldn’t have thrown back the entire drink in one go without so much as a flinch.  Any second now, Favor is going to wake up, but whether it will be to his bed back at the Sunrocker Ranch, or to the trail like the past fifteen years have all been nothing but smoke, he isn’t sure.  At least, it feels awfully like a dream. Like a lot of dreams.

“Rowdy Yates,” he says again, because he doesn’t seem capable of saying anything else.

The man rolls his eyes to look at him.  Aside, not fully on. “Gil Favor,” he says, sardonic.  He taps the bar for another drink. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he continues, and downs that drink, too.  “Least not on this side of the grave.”

Favor frowns.  God, but it’s strange, far too strange, to listen to this voice, these words, coming from the boy he once knew.  Perhaps this isn’t a dream. Perhaps it’s a nightmare. “What the hell are you doing in Fleming?” he asks, and then, without pause, “Rowdy— what the hell have you been doing?  Where— ?” a half-mad laugh comes out of him, so many questions crowding together in his mind. Where were you, what were you doing, how did you get to be like this, what happened, what happened  _ to  _ you?  

“Mr. Favor?” this from Sharp, the barkeep.  He’s been standing there, watching the exchange with wide eyes.  One of his hands is down and out of view, and for a second Favor is confused— what the hell is he going for the sawed-off for?  It’s just Rowdy— but then the scene resolves to him. Here he is, a pillar of the community (this still feels strange after so many years being just another cowboy), having a terse conversation with a grizzled, dust-burned and armed stranger.

“It’s alright, Sharp,” he says, and pointedly looks to the man’s hand, disappearing behind the bar.  He waits until it’s back in view before continuing. “We know each other. Used to work the cattle trails together.”

“Used to,” Rowdy mutters, and his right hand also comes into view, on the bar, and Favor sees a glimpse of a gun belt beneath the blanket he’s wearing.  Loaded full of ammo. He frowns, and waits until Sharp has moved farther down the bar before leaning in. Rowdy leans back slightly, angles his body so they’re facing one another.

“You know, you’re supposed to hand your firearms over at the Sheriff,” Favor half-whispers.  Half-chides. Almost like old times. “This is supposed to be a civilized town.”

Rowdy shows off the gun belt once more as he lifts his hands, puts a short cigar to his lips and lights it.  “Well, the Sheriff’s free to come and try to take it from me,” Rowdy growls, working his jaw out, and exhales a lungful of smoke.  Nothing like old times.

Favor frowns, not just at the words.  “Since when do you smoke?”

“Awhile,” Rowdy replies, and makes the short cigar crackle on the inhale.

“Rowdy Yates,” Favor repeats, because he has far too much else he wants to say.

“You know, if we’re gonna keep talking, I’d appreciate you not calling me  _ that _ .”

“What?  Why?”

“I don’t go by it anymore.”

_ Rowdy Yates, what happened to you,  _ is what Favor does not ask.  Instead, he says “What should I call you?”

The man between names thinks for a moment before speaking.  Favor can still read how the gears are turning round in his skull.  He’d always been able to see when his ramrod was twisting up a bushel of thoughts for market, so at least some things remain the same. 

“Joe Manco.”

Favor snorts, half in amusement, half of sheer surprise.  He mutters the name to himself beneath his breath,  _ Joe Manco. _  What the hell has Rowdy been up to?  Asking whether the law is after him seems superfluous, even facetious.  Looking like that, with a gun and Mexican coins, of course the law is after him.  The thought is heavy.

“Well, Joe Manco, what are you doing in Fleming?”

“Just passing through.”  Rowdy’s eyes move over Favor, once, and then settle on nothing.  “You still in cattle?”

“Got a new ranch, yeah, a few miles out of town.  The Sunrocker.”

A small frown.  “That’s not your brand.”

Favor finds himself mildly pleased that his old ramrod remembers his drive brand.  “I gave the Lazy Bar G to Gillian and her husband when she got married. Figured I’d retire nicely out here.  Ranch came with the brand.”

In a brief second, Favor’s heart catches and sparks because a flash passes over Rowdy’s new face— a slip of a moment, where surprise, nostalgia, and some kind of strange sore sadness passes his features, like Rowdy Yates looking up through a foot of lakewater, and then it’s hard again.

“Gillian married,” is all he says, slowly.  That’s all he says, for a long moment. His cigarillo reaches his lips and he drops it to the floor, crushing the embers with his heel.  The spurs on his boots ring; his hat, tilted down, hides his eyes.

Favor is frowning.  “You ever settle down?”

Another short bark of a laugh.  “Yeah, right.”

“I was being serious.”

“So was I.”

“What about those girls on the trail you were always running around?  Could of had your pick of any of them.” He’s joking, but only partly so.  He finds himself drowning slightly in how he can’t understand any of Rowdy’s responses.  The man refuses to hold prolonged eye contact with him. It’s like opening an old familiar to book only to realize it’s been rewritten in a language he can’t understand.

“Could of had my pick,” Rowdy echoes.  He tilts his head to one side in a quick jab.  “Kept picking you and the drive instead, the way I remember it.”

“I can remember a few times you picked a girl over the drive.”  Even if he can’t remember the names of those girls out of hand, he knows that all of his trail journals report on them in full.  But the not remembering rankles with him. They’re a long line of smiling blondes stepping between him and his memory of Rowdy, young and smiling fully.

“For a day, maybe,” he says.  “Always came crawling back, didn’t I?”

Sharp is back on Favor’s radar.  He’s hovering, cleaning a glass that doesn’t need to be cleaned with a rag that could use a good cleaning or two.  Rowdy’s one hand, on the bar, is curving, nails pulling against age-smoothed woodgrains.

The hairs on the back of Favor’s neck are rising up.  On the trail, that sense has saved many a life or two (and lost some lives, on the other side), but he takes of that feeling and makes a leap.  “If you’re just passing through, why not come stay at the Sunrocker with me? At the very least, come over and see the place. It’ll be like old times.”

Rowdy tilts his head, purses his lips.  “No dust, no threat of starvation, or comanches, or stampedes… Doesn’t feel much like old times.”

With that, he pushes back from the bar, doesn’t even nod or touch his hat, but heads out the swing doors.  It takes Favor a moment to get back to his senses after the pure ghostly removal of the moment and follow, but by then Manco is on his horse and riding towards the livery stable.  

“Hey, Sharp,” Favor calls back, standing on the sidewalk still, feeling odd in his plain clothes.  His feet have no spurs and so there is no ring to his walk as he heads back inside. “He rent a room?”

“No, Mr. Favor.  Is he a gunslinger?”

Favor doesn’t want to answer that.  “He wasn’t when I knew him. He was one of my drovers.”  Sharp stands there, waiting for an order Favor feels like he isn’t allowed to make.  “If he leaves town… watch which way he goes and send someone down to the ranch to tell me.  Alright?” He passes a few folded bills across the bar.

“You got it, Mr. Favor.”

“Thanks, Sharp.”

With that and all other business done, all Favor can really do short of following doggedly in the man calling himself Joe Manco’s wake is get back on his horse, and take the familiar path out of town, back to the Sunrocker.  The entire interaction at the saloon barely feels real. Like a some sort of imagination-fueled daydream. Imagine, meeting Rowdy again, after so long, only for him to be bitter and estranged. Favor feels knocked off his axis.  Feels like a storm is brewing on the horizon. The Almighty, waking up and stretching his limbs, preparing for a reckoning.

The ranch is quiet.  That’s the thing Favor has the hardest time accepting; he can sleep a whole night through without the need for vigilance, lest something go catastrophically wrong, be it a stampede or a storm of rustlers.  Sure, it’s not a hobby, keeping a working ranch, but the Sunrocker is considerably smaller than the Lazy Bar G ever was and the men Favor hires to help him out during the day don’t even live on his property.  They ride in from town at daybreak, and so by night, all Favor has for company in his small brick house is his shepherd dog Fox, who frankly is only occasionally concerned with Favor’s existence.

He does his evening chores, fixes himself some food, then sits to smoke his pipe and write in his journal.  It was all habit at first, the calm that came from a good smoke and a few minutes to himself in a corner of camp with his book and a pencil, but now it’s as part of him as his hands.  He carefully scratches out  _ Rowdy Yates _ and then beside it  _ Joe Manco _ .  He writes  _ tough  _ and  _ strange  _ and  _ lonely _ .  He erases  _ lonely  _ and writes out  _ wounded _ , remembering the gummy streak of blood on the side of Rowdy’s neck.  Whoever did that to him, Favor knows and hopes in equal measure that he’s dead— no way someone got away with doing that to the man Rowdy is now.  

Late night comes over the ranch, and Fox falls asleep in the entryway, twitching slightly in his sleep.  Favor steps over him, blowing out the gaslights and putting small things here and there back in its places.  He’s not used to owning so much, even after all these years he hasn’t had to live out of a bedroll and a saddlebag.  At the Lazy Bar G he had let the girls pick out and decorate the house with what they wanted. When he had bought this claim and moved in, he had brought only what he thought necessary, but it was still so much.  Just objects needing to be moved around every once in a while to keep him from losing his head.

Sleep comes over him, and he dreams, for a bit, of being around a campfire, laughing like nothing as the stars rock overhead.

But then he’s awake.

He’s awake and someone is in his house, whispering to his dog.

At first he doesn’t know the voice, but then he knows it like nothing else.

He gets out of bed, pulls on his trousers and coat, and walks out on silent bare feet.  No gun, because it’s just Rowdy—  _ Manco _ .  Perhaps he should get his gun.  He forces himself to take his hand off of the gun belt, hung over a hook long ago and left there to gather dust.  A hallway, a turn, crossing the empty parlor he’s never used, not in five years, but then he can hear Rowdy telling Fox to lay down, lay down boy, behind the door that leads to his study.  His study, where his trail logs are all stacked on shelves. Where his iron-locked safe is.

The door opens on silently hinges.  The facts come to him step by step, as they appear in his span of vision: Fox, gnawing happily on a bone, the open window, the curtains moving in the night air, the man he thought he knew.  Favor doesn’t want to believe it, but unlike so many other poor cowboys his eyesight is fine: there, the man, the open window, the horse waiting beyond, and slung across one shoulder, saddlebags.  The safe is open, yawning, empty, and a small part of Favor wishes he had stayed asleep. But the rest of him knows better.

“So,” he says, bitter, yet quiet, when it’s clear Rowdy won’t speak for himself, “this is what you’ve come to.  Stealing from an old friend.” He begins to move forward, cautious, like approaching a spooked horse.

Rowdy sneers back, moves like a snake, like the pitch of a flute.  “We weren’t friends, Favor.”

Favor stops in his tracks.  His turning is slow; perhaps the world’s rotation is becoming untethered, because no ground feels stable just about now.  “We weren’t?”

Rowdy reacts as if Favor drew a gun, or spat at him, reeling backwards a step and narrowing his eyes.  His all too familiar eyes. For a moment, the two men do nothing but look at one another, and Favor reflects that this is what it might be like for the men and women at the Tower of Babel, looking at once-familiar faces now separated by so much untranslatable strangeness.  Sure, they’ve been speaking with each other since Favor spotted him in saloon, but they haven’t been understanding one another.

Favor works his jaw.  “We remember things differently.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you do,” Rowdy says, and with a dismissive snort, turns and severs the conversation.  The shape of him is the same, the outline of his shoulders as he climbs, rangy-legged, through the window.  His horse whinnies, and Favor makes his way through his dark house with quick ease, throwing open the front door to the sight in full-bodied moonlight of Joe Manco astride his pawing animal, the full saddlebags settled across his saddlehorn.  His hat hangs around his neck by stampede strings, and a silverworked rattlesnake on his gun flashes. Favor knows that gun. He knows that gun.

“Rowdy—” Favor starts to call out, like he’s called out so many times, he feels like that name has worn a groove of walking in his head, how often he’s worried up and down it.  But this man isn’t Rowdy Yates. It isn’t someone Favor knows, not anymore.

Some things never go away.  He watches until Joe Manco is out of sight before turning back inside, and locking the door behind him.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come! I'm going to be alternating POVs for chapters from here on out. Rowdy/Manco is back at bat for next time :)

**Author's Note:**

> Since I'm so not used to the tagging system anymore, if you have any recommendations for things to tag, go ahead and comment and I'll handle it.
> 
> More chapters to come!


End file.
